School-based smoking prevention programmes may delay the age of smoking initiation, but do not appear to achieve lasting reductions in smoking prevalence beyond school-leaving age. We explored whether delaying the age at which someone initiates smoking may have life-time benefits by increasing the likelihood of quitting in later life. Data ...

OBJECTIVE: This report presents selected prevalence estimates for key indicators of alcohol use, cigarette smoking, leisure-time physical activity, body weight status, and sleep among U.S. adults, using data from the 2005-2007 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The NHIS is conducted annually by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National ...

OBJECTIVE: To compare the forced expiratory volume in first second (FEV1) among asymptomatic smokers and non-smokers for evaluating the effect of cigarette smoking on healthy subjects. METHODS: This was a Comparative cross-sectional study done at military hospital Rawalpindi from June 2006 till June 2007. Two hundred male subjects, 100 smokers ...

AIMS: Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is a life-saving, cost-effective smoking cessation treatment that doubles the chances of long-term abstinence regardless of the amount of additional support provided. We investigate the proportion of working age people (age 15-64 years) in Counties Manukau District Health Board (CMDHB) who obtained at least one ...

In the recent past, adenocarcinoma has become the commonest histological type of lung cancer (LC) in the developed countries. The present study was conducted to assess the change in epidemiology of LC, if any, in North India. Prospectively collected data on 250 newly diagnosed LC patients presenting to a tertiary ...

Individuals who smoke generally have a lower body mass index (BMI) than nonsmokers. The relative roles of energy expenditure and energy intake in maintaining the lower BMI, however, remain controversial. We tested the hypothesis that current smokers have higher total energy expenditure than never smokers in 308 adults aged 40-69 ...

Background. The aim of the present study was to examine sources of variation for serum cystatin C in a healthy Greek population. Methods. Cystatin C together with basic clinical chemistry tests was measured in a total of 490 adults (46 ± 16 yrs, 40% males) who underwent an annual health check. ...

The aim of the study is to investigate the determinants of exposure to ETS among Greek adolescents aged 11-17 years old. The GYTS questionnaire was completed by 5,179 adolescents. About 3 in 4 responders (76.8%) were exposed to ETS at home, and 38.5% were exposed to ETS outside of the ...

BACKGROUND: Prevalence of tobacco use in India is reaching alarming proportions, despite efforts by both World Health Organization (WHO) and Government of India (GOI) in controlling it. Part of the problem has been lack of available data on tobacco use in various groups. Although Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) and ...

Cephalopsyche, a new genus of caddisfly (Trichoptera, Odontoceridae), is described from Vietnam. Two new species are placed in the genus: Cephalopsyche gorgonasp. n. and Cephalopsyche neboissisp. n. The adult male and female of each species exhibit distinct sexual dimorphism, especially in head morphology. In males, there are hinged, chamber-like structures ...

Sedentary lifestyle combined with smoking, contributes to the development of a set of chronic diseases and to accelerating the course of aging. The aim of the study was to compare the hemodynamic and nutritional parameters between elderly persons practicing regular physical activity, nonsmokers and ex-smokers. The sample was comprised of ...

PURPOSE: To investigate the association between smoking and subcapsular cataract and blood levels of cadmium and lead, and serum levels of vitamins C, E, and beta carotene in the middle-age male population. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The present study comprised 60 cataractous male patients aged 44-55 years who attended Mansoura University ...

Awareness towards tobacco hazards has increased with time but its role alone towards cessation is questionable. With widespread menace of tobacco in developing countries like India, not much tobacco chewing prevalence and their quitting patterns data are available in urban Saurashtra region. 1. To find out prevalence of various forms ...

BACKGROUND: Smoking cessation is one of the primary targets for risk reduction of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. It also leads to the prevention of workers' illness or disability. Validation of a 100-point scale to evaluate perceived tobacco dependence was conducted using a 10-item questionnaire (the Tobacco Dependence Screener; TDS), a 6-item ...

Previous studies report on smoking in Iran but recent national data on tobacco use (including cigarette, water-pipe and pipe) have not been reported. In 2007, 5287 Iranians aged 15-64 years were sampled from all provinces as part of a national cross-sectional survey of non-communicable disease (NCD) risk factors. Data were ...

BACKGROUND: Sports sponsorship is one of the tobacco industry's main strategies to recruit new smokers among teenagers and young adults. METHODS: Monitoring Motor sports illicit broadcasting based on six channels in 2005; Dakar Rally (DR) and China Grand Prix impact evaluated with a one on one questionnaire administered on 12-24-year-old ...

OBJECTIVE: This study examined correlates of tobacco use among Hmong people residing in Wisconsin. METHODS: Surveys of youth (ages 12-17) and adults (ages > or =18), available in English and Hmong, were distributed in 14 communities through Hmong Mutual Assistance Associations and analyzed centrally. Surveys assessed daily and ever use ...

We aimed to investigate population-level changes in smoking initiation during California's Tobacco Control (CTC) Program from 1990 to 2005, a period during which tobacco industry marketing practices also changed. We used a discrete time survival analysis of data from the California Tobacco Survey to model changes in age of first ...

Parental monitoring has been identified as a predictor of adolescent smoking initiation. However, it is uncertain if the association is uniform across different racial groups. Random samples of low birth-weight and normal birth-weight children were drawn from newborn discharge lists (1983-1985) of two major hospitals in southeast Michigan, one serving ...

PURPOSE: To investigate the relative impacts of age and cigarette smoking on cutaneous blood flow and flow motion. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Skin blood flux was measured before and during the hyperaemic response to thermal warming of the skin to 43 degrees C using laser Doppler fluximetry (LDF) in 28 habitual smokers ...

OBJECTIVE: The present study compared the amplitudes of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs) and efferent suppression in smokers and non-smokers taking age into consideration. METHODS: Fifty smokers and fifty non-smokers who had normal hearing sensitivity with age range of 20-69 years were considered for the present study. TEOAEs were measured ...

OBJECTIVES: To explore the perceived impact among a group of Scottish 16- and 17-year-old school leavers of the recent increase in age of sale of cigarettes (1 October 2007) from 16 to 18 years on their ability to purchase and access cigarettes. STUDY DESIGN: Qualitative interviews with friendship pairs. METHODS: ...

OBJECTIVES: For years, South Korea has had one of the highest levels of tobacco use among males in the world, but a steady decline has been observed recently. This study examined how the smoking behaviour of male adults changed with age after the implementation of national tobacco control policies in ...

OBJECTIVES: To provide a more accurate estimate of early smoking-attributable mortality and potential years of life lost using data from a representative study of 103 study areas in China. METHODS: Two datasets were employed as follows. Firstly, retrospective national mortality survey data, which included a population of 67 million in ...

To compare traditional in-store age verification with a newly developed remote age verification system, 100 cigarette purchase attempts were made by 15-year-old "mystery shoppers." The remote system led to a strong increase in compliance (96% vs. 12%), reflecting more identification requests and more sale refusals when adolescents showed their identification ...

No previous studies document the effects of both comprehensive tobacco control and its defunding on youth smoking. This study tests the effect of the youth-focused Minnesota Youth Tobacco Prevention Initiative (MYTPI) and its shutdown on youth smoking and determines whether these effects differed by age. The Minnesota Adolescent Community Cohort ...

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of smoking, polymorphisms of XRCC1 codons 194 and 399, and age on levels of basal DNA damage (as measured by an alkaline comet assay) on mononuclear cells in 122 healthy Japanese workers. In the whole group of 122 individuals, the ...

To evaluate the influence of smoking on the outcome of COH and IUI in subfertile couples. We reviewed the medical files of all consecutive women, age </=35 years, attending our infertility clinics over an eigth-year period. Data on patient age, smoking habits, and variable related to infertility-treatment were collected from ...

INTRODUCTION: Adolescents' cigarette smoking is related to several factors. The aim of this study among high school students was to test the hypothesis that factors related to smoking behavior could differ in early (14-16-year-old students, younger age group) vs. late (17-21-year-old students, older age group) adolescence. METHODS: The smoking behavior ...

PURPOSE: Several studies have confirmed that smoking is a risk factor for depression in adolescence. These studies have not controlled for other lifestyle factors. The aim of this longitudinal study was to assess the relationship between smoking and depressive symptoms, controlling for other lifestyle factors. METHODS: This school-based longitudinal self-report ...

BACKGROUND: Starting from 1 January 2007, electronic locking devices based on proof-of-age (via electronic cash cards or a European driving licence) were installed in approximately 500,000 vending machines across Germany to restrict the purchase of cigarettes to those over the age of 16. OBJECTIVE: To examine changes in the number ...

Betel quid containing areca nut and chewing tobacco is used in many parts of India. In this study we evaluated the micronuclei (MN) in buccal mucosa of healthy individuals from southern India, who were regularly chewing a mixture of betel leaf, areca nut and tobacco. A total of 44 subjects ...

This study investigated the prevalence and demographic correlates of active and ever-smokers in Beijing and Shanghai. Using a multi-stage household probability sampling method, 5201 participants aged 18-70 underwent face-to-face interviews using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. 67.1% and 55.5% of male and 7.1% and 5.5% of female respondents were ever-smokers ...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate associations between personality traits in early adulthood (and changes in them) and change in smoking status. DESIGN: Prospective, longitudinal study of a general-population birth cohort. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: We measured smoking at ages 18, 26, and 32, and personality at ages 18 and 26 using the Multidimensional ...

BACKGROUND: Palmoplantar pustulosis (PPP) discloses some differences compared to vulgar psoriasis (PV) in terms of age of onset, female predominance and low occurrence of psoriasis lesions elsewhere. Cigarette smoking has been associated to PPP in international studies; nevertheless, these studies were never performed among Brazilian. OBJECTIVES: To compare prevalence of ...

BACKGROUND: Smoking and obesity are leading global causes of death. The aim of the present study was to develop a test to detect early lung abnormalities caused by smoking and/or obesity and to elucidate the underlying mechanisms and major contributory factors. METHODS: One hundred twenty-nine healthy adults, 20 to 40 ...

While sex differences in the nicotine withdrawal (NW) symptoms and craving (NC) have been extensively described in adult cigarette smokers, few studies have investigated these phenomena in adolescents. We investigated the effect of gender and hormonal contraception (HC) on NW and NC during the first 14 days of cessation in ...

We investigated how quantitative high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) measures of emphysema and airway wall thickness (AWT) vary with sex, age and smoking history. We included 463 chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) cases and 431 controls. All included subjects were current or ex-smokers aged > or = 40 yrs, and all ...

The death in London of the former secret service agent Alexander Livtinenko on 23 November 2006 generally attracted the attention of the public to the rather unknown radionuclide (210)Po. This paper presents the results of a monitoring programme of (210)Po background levels in the urines of noncontaminated people living in ...

This longitudinal study investigated differences in beliefs and perceived behavioural control between smokers and non-smokers in a large sample of adolescents. Positive and negative instrumental beliefs, normative beliefs, perceived behavioural control (PBC) and smoking status were assessed in the same participants at 11, 13 and 15 years of age. Prospective ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate coronary endothelial dysfunction in young healthy smokers by measuring myocardial blood flow (MBF) using [(15)O]H(2)O-PET. The study population was 18 young male volunteers consisted of 9 smokers (age: 23.8+/-1.1yr) and 9 non-smokers (age: 25.0+/-2.5yr). The smokers had been smoking cigarettes for 6.6+/-2.5 ...

AIMS: This study examined links of peer experiences (i.e. social status and affiliation with disruptive peers) throughout childhood with respect to adolescent smoking trajectories, after controlling for childhood disruptiveness. Specifically, we tested four models regarding links of peer experiences and deviant behaviours. DESIGN: Prospective community sample. PARTICIPANTS: A total of ...

Mixed models are used increasingly for analysis of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data. The variance parameters of the random effects, which indicate the degree of heterogeneity in the population of subjects, are considered usually to be homogeneous across subjects. Modeling these variances can shed light on interesting hypotheses in substance ...

Nicotine is a drug of abuse that has been reported to have many adverse effects on the developing nervous system. We previously demonstrated that embryonic exposure to nicotine alters axonal pathfinding of spinal secondary motoneurons in zebrafish. We hypothesize that these changes will persist into adulthood. The Tg(isl1:GFP) line of ...

BACKGROUND: Alpha-1-antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency increases the risk of emphysema, especially in smokers. In 1972-1974, all 200,000 Swedish new-born infants were screened for AAT deficiency and individuals with severe (PiZZ) and moderate (PiSZ) deficiency have been followed-up regularly. The aim of the present study was to examine their lung function at ...

The objective of this study was to examine the use of pharmacotherapy while attempting smoking cessation among current smokers and also the prevalence of use among former smokers in Italy. The data for this study were collected as part of six Italian tobacco surveys conducted between the years 2002 and ...

During the 1990s, both prevalence and average cigarette consumption declined in the United States, but age-specific changes have not been reported. All four of the nationally and state representative U.S. Current Population Surveys-Tobacco Use Supplements from 1991-2002 (n = 542,470) were analyzed for trends in cigarette consumption among smokers in ...

Oxidative stress is assumed to be the key underlying factor in the pathogenesis of many common diseases. This study describes the basal levels of 8-iso-PGF(2alpha ), a major F(2)-isoprostane and an in vivo oxidative stress biomarker in healthy subjects from three countries, namely Italy, Poland and Sweden, in relation to ...